By James S. Griffith, The Southwest Center, University of Arizona

Since 1976, the Southwest Mission Research Center (SMRC) has sponsored annual three-day tours in northern Sonora, that speak to the history and present-day life of several towns and villages where Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J., established missions between 1687 and 1711. Here’s what a typical tour looks like:

The Lay of the Land

After a Thursday evening orientation at a local motel, we leave Tucson Friday morning, cross the border, and transfer into our Mexican bus driven by our old friend, Adán Morales. Tourist visas dealt with, it’s on to Ímuris, where we make a brief stop to buy quesadillas and green corn tamales and stretch our legs.

Then eastward over the mountains to the lonely site of Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera, the one truly ruined and abandoned mission church on our itinerary. Here we learn about the church, stroll through the country cemetery, and have a picnic lunch.

Then it’s back over the mountains to the bustling agricultural city and pilgrimage destination of Magdalena, where we’ll encounter Father Kino’s remains and visit the San Francisco Chapel, focal point of a huge regional folk-Catholic devotion and destination for the Pimería’s biggest annual pilgrimage (held on October 4).

After some shopping time on the Plaza Monumental, we visit the nearby village of Santa Ana Viejo with its nineteenth-century church, lovingly preserved and restored by the villagers themselves. Then comes the long haul to Caborca, the Motel El Camino, and the first of our two famous margarita parties.

On Saturday we head east up the Altar Valley, with stops at three mission communities: Oquitoa, Átil, and Tubutama. Oquitoa’s San Antonio mission, filled with interesting colonial religious art, sits on a hilltop above the beautiful village and surrounded by the village cemetery (itself a fascinating place).

San Francisco de Átil boasts a very new church beside the ruins of the original structure, some nice art, and many stories.

San Pedro y San Pablo de Tubutama is the most elaborate church we’ll visit, and has its own art and stories. There we picnic under the trees along the river, before retracing our steps to Pitiquito, where the church of San Diego with its fascinating early murals awaits us.

Finally, we end up just before sunset at Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Caborca, where the townspeople have been working hard to uncover the hidden nineteenth-century murals that once covered the interior. And back to El Camino and another margarita party!

On Sunday, we drive west to an absolutely fantastic petroglyph site, where we also take a short nature walk.

Then eastward to San Ignacio de Cabórica and its lovely church, where we enjoy a final lunch—this time in the beautiful garden of the local sacristana. Finally, we head north for the border and Tucson.

The People

And having presented that bare skeleton of facts and destinations, I find that I’ve left out the really important parts of the Kino Mission Tour experience. To be sure, we’ll look at a number of places where things happened, visit many churches with roots in the colonial history of the region, and see lots of lovely religious art. But we’ll also sample regional foods, discuss current problems in the borderlands, and meet all sorts of people. Each tour is in its way unique, depending on who is leading it, what their interests are, and what opportunities open up as we move along.

We don’t travel in an insulated world of tourism, but rather, close to the ground and the people of Sonora. This allows us to hear about fresh opportunities, and to take advantage of them as they arise. The Sunday visit to the petroglyph site, for instance, is a recent addition to our itinerary. And you never know what’s going to happen next. Why on one trip, we were traveling from a carne asada dinner in Caborca, and passed a three-piece band walking along the road. We stopped the bus, did some rapid negotiation, and continued the party back at the motel . . . complete with fine norteña music!

We are not professional tour guides—we’re enthusiasts who know and love the region and wish to share it with others. Included in our number are historians, anthropologists, folklorists, archaeologists, architects, journalists, and members of families with strong historical roots in Sonora. There is no standard script—while each of us covers the same basic main stories, we each have our own specialties and interests. Along the way, we often meet with our Sonoran counterparts: archaeologists and others who are working to preserve their own churches and history. Little of this can be scheduled, but we leave plenty of room for it to happen!

Our staff is divided into “talkers” and “workers”—a bit misleading, as many of the “workers” are just as knowledgeable as the “talkers” and roles are liable to switch back and forth at a moment’s notice. Let’s just say that all the folks on the bus are there either because they paid to go on a tour or because they are crazy in love with the region and can’t stay away from it.

Our guests are also a pretty exciting bunch—we’ve had architects, historians, astronomers, naturalists, and others join us, each of whom has been persuaded to share some of his or her specialized knowledge. We’ve had members of old Sonoran families looking for relatives. So a lively spirit of intellectual interchange colors the entire tour. But if all this sounds too cerebral and serious—don’t forget those margarita parties!

Jim Griffith has been working the tours since sometime in the ‘70s, and “has more fun than most people.” For more information or to book a tour, call Susan Smith at (520) 621-6278, email kinotours@southwestmissions.org or visit www.southwestmissions.org. Recommended reading: The Pimería Alta: Missions and More, written especially for the Kino Mission Tours and edited by the late Jim Officer, Mardith Schuetz-Miller, and Bunny Fontana. Each tour guest is given a copy at orientation, and there’s a traveling bookstore from which various books by members of the Kino Mission Tour staff may be purchased.